Yesterday’s post talked about the updated WAA Term and Definitions (3 more than 2007 – total of 29) for 2009. New this year is an “Ask Your Vendor” area which is highlighted below. A PDF verison of the complete compliance and questions is available for download.

Ask Your Vendor responses:

Are Flash and other Rich Internet Application advances considered to be page views by default?

Flash and other Rich Internet Application advances are NOT considered page views by default, however, users can customize these events to all count page views, if they so choose. Flash and other Rich Internet Application advances are considered diff types of events.

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Does the analyst have the option to count data captured by an event tag as a “page” if desired?

Yes.

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Does the tool know about errors (status codes in the 400’s, 500’s) by default, or only if a special error page is created and instrumented?

WebTrends Analytics does know about errors if a special error page is created and instrumented.

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If activity consists only of non-page activity, is it counted as a visit?

Yes.

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What is your default timeout?

30 minutes.

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Are visits cut-off after any length of time?

No.

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If you resume activity after a timeout, how is that handled?

If the activity resumes less than 30 minutes from previous activity, then it’s considered part of the same visit; otherwise it’s considered a new visit.

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Site activity –> (2 hours) –> Resume site activity. How many visits is this?

2 visits.

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If two visits, what is the referrer of the second visit?

No Referrer / Direct Traffic.

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Does the tool count a new session on external referrer?

No.

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Google search –> Your site –> Yahoo search –> Your site. How many visits is this? What is(are) the visit referrer(s)?

1 Visit, referrer = Google.

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What technologies are used by your tool to calculate unique visitors?

Compound sessionization techniques is descending order of priority: authenticated logon, persistent cookie, session cookie, session ID, IP+agent, each of which can be enabled/disabled at the users discretion.

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By default, are persistent cookies used to count unique visitors? 3rd party?

No. 1st party? Yes.

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Authenticated user cookie?

Yes. Preferred approach is for the customer to provide their own 1st-party cookie. In lieu of that, WebTrends utilizing its own cookie in the standard tag that is issued from the customer’s domain, thus also making it 1st party. 1st- party cookie tracking is also used for cross-domain activity where a 3rd-party cookie is used only for replicating user IDs across the 1st-party cookies.

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How are unique visitors counted if cookies are blocked or not logged?

WebTrends can track session cookies or revert back to unique IP address.

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Are estimated visitors from blocked cookies included in your unique visitors counts?

Not by default, though customers can create this calculation themselves or via a Services offering.

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Given the functionalities of your tool, are there situations that would cause one visitor to be counted multiple times: Counted via authenticated + unauthenticated? When a maximum amount of data that can be stored around a cookie or database key is reached? Other situations?

The only instances in which the same visitor may be counted twice are 1) if the visitor deletes the tracking cookie or 2) if the visitor is using 2 different machines to visit the site. All forms of visitor tracking in WebTrends are de-duped against each other to avoid double counting of visitors under normal circumstances.

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Are cookie-based estimates adjusted to account for cookie deletion?

Cookie-based estimates are not adjusted to account for cookie deletion, by default. WebTrends provides a feature to calculate estimated visitor counts themselves or via a Services offering.

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“Zero Duration” Visits – Ask your vendor if they include “zero duration” visits in visit duration measurements. Some vendors will include it in the calculation while others don’t.

No.

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Visit Duration Delimiters – Are timestamps for page views the only ones used in the visit duration calculation, or are timestamps for other activities (errors, events, etc.) considered?

Time stamps for all activities are considered for visit duration. If you go from page to page on a website, play video, pause video, have not clicked on page in 30 minutes, but have been active, the visit continues. If video is tagged with marker points, then the visit would continue.

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Are mail servers (e.g. mail.google.com) excluded from the default search engine definitions?

Yes. Specific list of places that are listed as search engine exclude mail servers.

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Are internal referrers, such as might be recorded when a visitor resumes activity after a time-out, exposed in the tool and included in aggregate measurements?

Yes. There is an administrative function for creating a list of internal referrers for this purpose

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If Page Exit Ratio is exposed in the tool, what metric is used as the denominator?

The denominator is Total Number of Page Views (see question # 22 in Terms/Definitions section/doc).

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Are any conversion metrics configured by default for particular site types? What activities do they measure?

Yes. Any page, action or event on a website may be considered a conversion, either via a tag parameter or via a URL-based definition Several pre-defined conversion metrics are provided, including shopping cart checkouts, purchases and registrations.

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If any conversion rate metrics are configured by default, are they based on visits or on visitors?

By default conversion Events and Visits. Visitors can also be calculated.